


Things You Don't Learn in Biology Class

by tokillthatmockingbird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, a character study of derek hale, and his thoughts about kate argent, i'm a writer not a scientist, so cut me some slack here i tried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokillthatmockingbird/pseuds/tokillthatmockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is supposed to be less confusing when you break it down into science. That’s what his mom always told him.</p>
<p>Cancer is just cell division gone rogue, a failed evolutionary attempt on the part of molecules that couldn’t stand to be the same all the time. But do one thing wrong, and it catches, and suddenly everyone is affected by that stupid decision— and people are hurting and people are dying because decisions matter, even when you’re so small—when you feel so small— you could fit something like a trillion times into the period at the end of a sentence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things You Don't Learn in Biology Class

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece I wrote a long time ago and have been tweaking to do what I want it to do. No real plot, just... thoughts, I guess. I hope you like it!

Everything is supposed to be less confusing when you break it down into science. That’s what his mom always told him.

Cancer is just cell division gone rogue, a failed evolutionary attempt on the part of molecules that couldn’t stand to be the same all the time. But do one thing wrong, and it catches, and suddenly everyone is affected by that stupid decision— and people are hurting and people are dying because decisions matter, even when you’re so small—when you _feel_ so small— you could fit something like a trillion times into the period at the end of a sentence.

The human body is made up of nearly sixty-five percent water, which is probably why he feels like he’s drowning in the dead ones that pile around him, a side effect of sharp claws and old vendettas and the endless shortcomings of an unchecked humanity. More than half your body is made up of liquid hydrogen and oxygen bonds that could kill you if they weren’t contained under your skin, and that feels weird but _powerful_ to him, like he’s looking death in the face and winning.

Every person he fears, every person he hates, is a multi-faceted, entirely complex system of biology—organs and proteins and phosphates and blood— but they’d die the same simple death, just like him, if someone ripped out their heart without a warning.

And cells have this habit of committing suicide when there was something wrong inside them— like a molecule out of place or a hole that couldn’t be filled—and it should make him feel better that self-mortification is literally coded into his DNA, but it doesn’t. Just because he shares the thought of self-destruction with the double helixes in his nuclei doesn’t make it feel right.

To make matters worse, there’s only a _part_ of your brain that contains your words, but you’ve got a complicated network of pieces that controls your emotions. And it’s unfair to have your Broca’s area, which is just an _area_ , really—a finite and contained space in the atmosphere of your flaring neurons— to explain an entire limbic _system_ of feelings. There is not enough room in that niche to hold all the words he thinks it would take to explain the way that he feels.

He is no expert with his words anyway, so the muscle of his tongue isn’t as practiced as the ones that band under his arms. His mouth doesn’t respond the way your carpals and metacarpals do, curling into protective, shaking fists before his lips can piecemeal a conglomeration of sentiment and honesty and rusty English that don’t go _together,_ even when he tries really hard.

His mother always said he couldn’t speak with his fists, but he thinks they display a clear thought just as well as his neurotransmitters can send a message from his brain to his battle-worn limbs. Because he is not just fighting with broken bits of DNA and cruel kids on the dirt streets anymore. Now he fights for a livelihood; because even though he and the boy down the road are made up of the same stuffs, of cells and water and infinitesimally small atoms, he is more human than Derek is ( _werewolf_ ), and he has to fight for the rights that the neighbor boy was born into.

He paid a lot of attention in biology class because his father had always said that it’s what’s on the _inside_ that makes the difference, and he starts doubting that it’s true. Because if he peeled back the layer of his skin and put his muscle and bone up to that of the woman who murdered your family, he’d see the same thing. (Even if he conjures up images of something inhuman— what mortal man could kill innocent children?— Kate’s blood wouldn’t be black and her bones not made of steel. Just calcium and palettes turned red with exposure to the free air).

Knowing she was human like him was an imbalanced thought in Derek’s brain. On one hand, it is a solid reassurance to know that if he pulled her apart, she’d be 206 bones and two lungs and a heart, just like him. Just as easy to hurt and kill as him. On the other, he can’t understand why apoptosis suddenly failed in her, how evolution did not spot the glaring blackness, the _wrongness_ that seeped through the pores in her skin. He can’t understand why instead of atomic death, she got to breathe the same oxygen as him, outside of a prison cell, because humans— not biology— created the legal system, and it was as flawed as cancer cells.

He cannot believe in the mortality of this woman whose limbic system was so flawed that his neurotransmitters deliberately told her hands to set fire to a home of bitter enemies but innocent people without any conflict of her complex emotions. He does not believe in her mortality until his uncle slashes lines across the column of her neck, and she’s flailing bone and flesh until she hits the ground. Her blood is red, just like Derek’s, and just like the blood that now stains his own hands.


End file.
